The real mistake we made was taking any of it seriously. It took some time before we realized we were mostly encountering classic Internet trolls, with multiple fake accounts and nothing to do with their time. But initially their vitriol wore us down. One by one, everyone who actually knew Adnan in person, including his school friends, like Krista Meyers, and his brothers, Saad, and I left subreddit, but only after being through an emotional wringer.
While trolls didn’t matter, what was relevant was the response of the actual, real-life public, especially the Muslim community. Though Adnan had never said a word to any of us about his childhood friends and community abandoning him, Saad, Yusuf, and I carried a lot of anger at the people he had been raised with. Now, with Serial, they were coming forward again. Friends who hadn’t contacted Adnan in over a decade, elders who knew him since childhood but had written him off as a lost cause—they were coming back.
We were getting messages, sometimes sheepish ones, with apologies for being absent but also expressing gratitude for not having forgotten Adnan. Early on, as Serial exploded, I couldn’t help but be snarky online about these friends who suddenly remembered Adnan. I reined it in quickly, though, realizing it was wrong to ostracize those who just wanted to show support now.
But Yusuf in particular finally spilled out the pain his family had held onto for over a decade. In a number of posts he pointed out how people had the nerve to come forward now that Adnan’s case was all over the news, and how most of the community had just let him fade away, like he never even existed.
* * *
“The message you’re sending is really messed up.”
“Why?”
“Basically you’re telling people, people like my kids, that it’s normal for Muslim kids to sleep around, drink, smoke pot. And you’re perpetuating the idea that it’s the only way to prove you’re a cool American, which means the Muslims who don’t do that shouldn’t be trusted. Like if he was actually a religious kid, then maybe he would have had motive. I don’t want my kids to hear this.”
I was a guest at someone else’s home, meeting this man for the first time. It was Thanksgiving, Serial was more than halfway through, and I was not in a good place. I was already sleep deprived and stressed. I had gained twenty pounds in the past two months and had chronic back pain. As I sat there listening to him and then glanced over at his kids, both teenagers, I felt a familiar stabbing pain shoot through my side.
I gave him a piece of my mind.
“So you’re telling me that what upsets you about this story is not the fact that Adnan was locked away for life because they used his religion against him, a kid your son’s age, that his family has been destroyed, and that he could potentially die in prison, rather you’re upset we are ‘airing dirty laundry’ about the lifestyles of Muslim kids.”
“Yeah, but it’s not true. That’s not how Muslim kids live. I never did those things.”
“Neither did I. And I have a teenage daughter and hope to God she doesn’t either because I’d kick her ass. But I know plenty of kids who did and I know kids still do. That’s reality, you don’t have to accept it, you can choose willful ignorance if it makes you feel better.”
“Well, I listened to the first episode and that’s all I needed to hear.”
Before I could bury my foot in his rear end, the friend witnessing the exchange brightly suggested that I take a walk with her.
About eight months later I was at a beautiful Pakistani benefit gala, dressed to the nines, when an excited, glamorous, older lady came over to introduce herself. Tall, slender, impeccably coiffed, and wrapped in many yards of a delicate chiffon sari, she reeked of expensive perfume and the excesses of a life very comfortably lived.
She was a fan, her daughters were fans, they all loved Serial; her relatives back in some posh area of Pakistan loved it too. She thanked me for my tenacity and asked for a photograph together.
She handed her phone to someone else, and we posed and took a quick picture. She grinned and texted the image to her daughter, casually said, “Even though I think he’s guilty, it’s rather wonderful what all you’ve done.”
My smile evaporated.
“Why do you think he’s guilty?”
“Well he was hiding the fact that he was smoking pot from his parents.…”
“Are you saying because he was smoking pot he could be a murderer or are you saying that because he hid his pot-smoking from his parents, which is what any kid who smokes pot would do, that makes him a murderer?”
She looked a bit flustered.
I looked around the room, a room full of very wealthy Pakistani-Americans who might never have known the kind of modest middle-class life Adnan or my family lived.
“I bet this room is full of people and their kids who’ve smoked weed and drink alcohol and had plenty of romances. Lots of Pakistanis drink alcohol, right? Does that mean they could commit murder? You are judging a seventeen-year-old kid for these things? Do you remember being seventeen? And do you find it a bit ironic that the State argued he killed Hae because he was religious, while you’re arguing that he killed her because he clearly wasn’t?”
She capitulated, probably hoping I would just let it go.
“Maybe you’re right, maybe he’s not guilty.”
I turned and took my seat, fuming.
I had dozens of such in-person encounters with Muslims who couldn’t get past their judgment of Adnan for smoking pot and dating. The deep discomfort they felt over hearing about such trespasses was not new. But I had expected that by now, by 2014, we had evolved to the point of being able to see beyond the mildly poor choices of a seventeen-year-old to what should really distress us—that the ugliest stereotypes about his religion, our religion, were used to convict him.
Others asked me to come speak to their Sunday school classes on the dangers of such things, pointing to Adnan’s story as a lesson learned. I should have actually shown up at a few of those Sunday school classes so I could rail against the very premise. “Muslims are human beings too, we will mess up, even God expects that.”
* * *
Ironically, as much as I had worried about this story being told at a time when polls showed that anti-Muslim bias in the United States was at its highest, my concern was unnecessary. The overwhelming public response, as Serial broke all records and hit over a hundred million listeners, was empathy and support for Adnan, with little attention paid to his religion other than disgust at how the State used it against him. It was an incredibly pleasant surprise, given that in the many years since 9/11, Muslim activists and organizations had pretty much failed to turn the tide of public opinion. There simply were no positive American Muslim narratives that had taken firm root in the public discourse. As I explained in the New America Foundation trainings, we had lost the narrative war to Muslim extremists and anti-Muslim bigots. The only meme we had been trying to sell for decades was “Islam is a religion of peace” and, surprise, no one was buying it.
It was one of the unintended consequences, an incredibly positive one, that Serial may have turned this case into the most positive story about a Muslim in America since 9/11. But as wildly popular as the story had become, there was near silence from the most prominent American Muslim figures, probably because supporting Adnan meant supporting something I cared about. And by the time Serial exploded, a lot of American Muslims weren’t very happy with me.
* * *
In the early months of 2013 I got a call from a dear friend, Imam Abdullah Antepli, at that time the Muslim chaplain at Duke University. I knew Abdullah from our time in Connecticut—he was the coordinator of Muslim students at the Hartford Seminary, where my husband began studying in 2006. Abdullah had not only gotten us our first apartment in Connecticut, with a key ready for us the night we moved there, but also introduced us to the local Muslim and interfaith community. Over the years, Abdullah was always a willing mentor and friend and always came through when needed. Not just for me, but for everyone. That’s
just who he was and is.
I remember that call because it put me in a bind.
“You are going to Israel with me in May,” he said.
“Uhh. Abdullah, first of all, you know my girls are in school, I can’t take off and even if I could … Israel? No thanks,” was my response.
But he went on for a while, on that call and on a few others during which he finally talked me into agreeing to be part of the very first cohort of what would become an incredibly controversial program—the Muslim Leadership Initiative, or MLI. It was a program that took American Muslim leaders to study in Jerusalem at the Shalom Hartman Institute (SHI), one of the most prominent and well-respected Jewish educational establishments in both Israel and the United States. We would be going to study not just Judaism, but the role of the state of Israel in Judaism. In other words, we would be going to study Zionism.
The life cycle of nearly every American Muslim activist begins with the Palestinian struggle; it is where nearly all of us cut our teeth. It is so central to the collective Muslim consciousness that it unites an otherwise diverse global population like no other issue. Being pro-Palestinian is not anti-Semitic. But it is anti-Zionist. This was a line that simply could not be crossed.
I also entered activism in my early twenties as an antiwar and anti-Israel protestor. I joined a small D.C. chapter of Al-Awda, the Palestinian right-of-return organization, led locally by a Palestinian Christian man and an Israeli Jewish woman. It legitimized our cause that neither of the leaders was a Palestinian Muslim—this, after all, was not a religious issue. It was a political and human rights issue.
Over the years I became deeply involved in interfaith work on various social justice issues, yet I knew that many of the Jews I worked with were strong supporters of Israel. Anytime there was unrest in that part of the world, we all retreated to our corners, only to reemerge when the latest conflict flare was over. We broke bread together, we built Habitat for Humanity homes together, we fought against poverty together, we stood against anti-Semitism and Islamophobia together. But the one thing we did not ever, ever do was discuss Israel, Palestine, and the Occupation. Beyond the pragmatics of avoiding such conversations, there was the moral imperative of not giving Zionists oxygen. We do not normalize Zionism; we do not even pretend it has an equal measure of legitimacy as Palestinian self-determination. We do not break “BDS,” the “boycott, divestment, and sanctions” movement against Israel and Israeli institutions and products. This was the rule for people of conscience, no exceptions.
And here was Abdullah asking me to join him, along with almost two dozen other high-profile American Muslims, in Israel, to study Zionism, at an institute that was subject to BDS. He wanted me to break all the rules.
If it wasn’t for the fact that I trusted Abdullah completely, knew his commitment to justice, and understood that nothing he did was without reason, I never would have done it. He had a vision, a mission. We had spent decades working with anti-Zionist Jews on support for Palestine—it got us nowhere. Palestinian suffering, Israeli aggression, polarization, entrenchment, and extremism on both sides only increased. It was time to figure out what this connection to Israel was about for the majority of American Jews, something I never understood. As a Muslim, I understand the attachment to holy places, but not to nation-states. I feel connected to Mecca, but no love for Saudi Arabia necessarily. The seemingly unequivocal American Jewish support of Israel always confused me. MLI was about exploring that, and also about seeing if there was space to agree with this politically influential constituency on how to end an occupation that destroyed the bodies of the occupied, and the souls of the occupiers.
I gave it a lot of thought, spoke to others who were invited, consulted mentors, and prayed about it to work my head and heart through it. And then I went.
Our group went to Jerusalem during the summers of 2013 and 2014, two weeks at a time, to study on-site as Fellows of the Shalom Hartman Institute. In the year between the two summers we met for retreats in the United States and once a month had online courses. Most of our study was centered on Torah, Talmud, and Mishnah, and included an examination of how Jews viewed themselves and the land, that rocky, inhospitable, otherwise unremarkable land, through a religious and historic lens. We visited the West Bank, spent time with Palestinians who lived in Israel proper, and visited the holy sites. Nearly every day we studied as rabbinic students did, in havruta sessions, and almost every day we trekked to the Old City to pray at the Al Aqsa mosque. And although we had gone as students, we ended up inadvertently teaching our teachers about Islam and Muslims. The SHI has brilliant scholars and academics, but the sad irony is that most of them will profess not knowing a single Muslim personally, despite being surrounded by them, or know anything about Islam. We pointed out that their daily lives were serviced by Palestinian workers. The cleaners, cooks, and repair people we saw on the campus were all Palestinian Muslims. And they were thrilled to see us there, in the middle of a Jewish educational institute holding the Muslim prayer in congregation three or four times a day.
The lessons I and other Fellows have learned from this program could fill an entire book; instead, upon returning from Jerusalem in June of 2014, I wrote an article about it for Time magazine titled “Seeking Common Ground in the Holy Land.” The editors changed it to “What an American Muslim Learned from Zionists.”
It came out shortly before Gaza erupted from “Operation Protective Edge,” the Israeli assault that began in July of 2014, lasting nearly two months, including the month of Ramadan, and killing over two thousand Palestinians. As our social media feeds filled with images of dead Palestinian babies and children, my piece about spending a year studying Zionism ignited a heated, raging reaction from American Muslim activists.
We were called Zionist whores, sellouts, Trojan horses, dogs, pigs, blood suckers, traitors, normalizers, the list went on. We received thousands of ugly tweets, messages, and threats. This, despite our collective decades of work serving the Muslim community, and despite our continued public opposition to Israeli aggression. Numerous boycott petitions were launched against us, to prevent us from being invited to speak or write anywhere, and they were signed by the most prolific American Muslim activists and faith leaders.
It was truly the summer of American Muslim discontent. Collective rage had come to a head, and much of it came right at me, thanks to that article. By the time Serial rolled out a couple of months later, I was already exhausted from social media vitriol and had lost the backing of those who had supported my work for years. I felt terrible that Adnan wasn’t getting support from high-profile community leaders because of me; there was radio silence from most of them about the case. It wasn’t that they hated him, they hated me. Part of their collective punishment was that they’d not only totally ignore his case but also ignore the fact that he was humanizing Muslims in a way activists had failed to do for decades.
The stress didn’t just come from dealing with Muslims, Muslim leaders, Reddit and trolls, though; it also came from the content of the podcast itself, and most importantly, from Sarah.
* * *
I got the text from Sarah late one night, around eleven o’clock. She was distressed. Yusuf, as he had a few times in the past, had sent her an angry, belligerent message, accusing her of profiting from his family’s misery. She knew he was fragile and was afraid he might hurt himself. So she texted me to check in on him.
I took a deep breath and gave him a call. No answer. Then I forwarded Sarah’s message to Saad, asking him to check in with Yusuf. Saad was irritated; he didn’t want to deal with this. We had all been through a few bouts of Yusuf’s acting out in the past few months and were losing patience.
I finally got through to Yusuf. He was fine, and he wasn’t going to hurt himself, but he refused to let Sarah get away with using his family. At least a dozen times I had spoken him off this ledge, pointing out that no one had ever spent as much time and energy investigating the case as Sarah. A couple of time
s he had lashed out at me and Saad, saying we were responsible for not protecting Adnan, that he was a child in 1999 but we were adults and we failed him.
He was right; all the adults had failed Adnan. But because our own nerves were frayed, neither Saad nor I were very tolerant about what were clearly cries of pain from Yusuf. Our response, usually over group text, was somewhere between “You’re right, fine, but we’re doing the best we can now” to “Go to hell, Yusuf, it’s not like you ever even looked at the files sitting in your basement for the past decade.”
We were all clearly on edge. But what pushed Yusuf over the edge and what pushed me over the edge on a few occasions were two different things.
I understood the value in keeping people engaged by playing both sides of the story; what I couldn’t stomach was Serial’s failure to tell the entire story, to leave out things that were important in understanding what really happened. In the episode about the police investigation, Sarah concluded that the cops were good guys, just doing their job the best they knew how.
But these were not just good guys who never got anything wrong.
In the past decade alone, three defendants from Baltimore who were convicted of murder, Ezra Mable, Sabien Burgess, and Rodney Addison, have had their convictions overturned after serving long prison terms. All three were investigated and charged by Detectives MacGillivary and Ritz, and Sargeant Steven Lehman, or a combination thereof. Mable filed such a strong post-conviction petition that the Baltimore City State’s Attorney actually joined it, asking the court for relief, which came in the form of his release. Mable then filed suit against the city (which was dismissed for lack of prosecution), naming Ritz, among others, alleging that the police “resolved to focus entirely on Mr. Mable and did not attempt to determine the actual truth in their investigation or to develop a case based on truthful facts.” Mable maintains that Ritz coerced two witnesses, using high-pressure tactics and threats, to get their cooperation against Mable. One of the witnesses repeatedly maintained that she saw another man commit the crime, not Mable. The other witness, who told cops she never saw who committed the murder, was threatened with having her children taken from her and finally relented, identifying Mable as the culprit. Faced with two eyewitnesses, Mable pled guilty and served ten years before filing his ultimately successful post-conviction appeal.
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